side. Both shores possessed eminences which gave an enormous advantage to defensive artillery; at the Narrows both sides towered above approaching ships; but there was little resemblance between the steep and rugged cliffs of Gallipoli and the gentler altitudes of Asia Minor. The difference extended even to external vegetation and colouring, for on the Asiatic side woods were plentiful and the general character of the landscape was verdant, whereas on the European side the rough, yellow hills were clad in low scrub, and woods clung to the hollows alone. The Asiatic side began with the marshy plains of Troy, intersected by low ridges stretching to Mount Ida, thirty miles away. Thereafter came pleasant valleys, breezy pastures, and villages set in the midst of orchards. Small wonder that some ardent soldiers with an eye for country were in favour of initiating a campaign amid the agreeable environment of Asia Minor and of leaving the arid steeps of the Gallipoli Peninsula severely alone.

The peninsula was very like a compact and miniature replica of a section of the tribal country on the North-West Frontier of India. It was a mass of diversified heights, difficult enough to traverse in time of peace and formidable obstacles in war when courageously held. Except in a few valleys there was little cultivation, though a cypress grove, or occasionally an olive grove, sometimes broke the monotony near one or other of the small and infrequent hamlets. Roads were even fewer, and the scanty inhabitants of the peninsula generally preferred to make their journeys from place to place by boat. Water was scarce, and none at all was found at most of the points selected for the land attacks. The disheartening nature of the Gallipoli operations, in the form in which they were undertaken, was that each successive height surmounted seemed only to reveal further ridges beyond. Thus at Cape Helles, at the extreme point of the peninsula, the ground immediately rose from the sandy beaches to a height of 140 feet. A couple of miles inland were ridges 300 feet high. Beyond, at a distance of another mile and a half, was the peak of Achi Baba, 600 feet high, and the first great goal of the Allied Forces. In order really to command the Narrows, yet another height, the Kilid Bahr plateau (or Pasha Dagh), had to be won. At its highest point Kilid Bahr reached an altitude of 700 feet, and it lay six miles beyond Achi Baba, though only five

miles from Gaba Tepe, where the Australians and New Zealanders first landed. Farther on again, north-west of the Narrows, was the broad and precipitous knoll of Sari Bair, 971 feet high, and covered with ravines and dense thickets. All the way onwards to the town of Gallipoli there were hills, several of which rose above 1,000 feet, while others were 800 and 900 feet. The whole contour of the peninsula was scored with gullies and ravines, and the hills were intersected by watercourses. The shallow streams near the end of the peninsula mostly ran into the Straits, and few brooks found their way into the Aegean. The greatest breadth of the Gallipoli Peninsula was at a spot just pasi the Narrows, where it was a little under twelve miles wide. A roughly-paved road ran from the town of Gallipoli along the central ridges to the village of Maidos, near the Narrows. A continuation of this road, little more than a track, passed from Maidos and skirted the slopes of the Kilid Bahr plateau to the village of Krithia, which lay under the western slopes of Achi Baba. Beyond the town of Gallipoli the peninsula narrowed gradually until the isthmus of Bulair was reached. At Bulair the distance across the isthmus from beach to beach was exactly three miles, but the isthmus by no means amounted to a depression. In its centre was a hill 489 feet high. The shores of Bulair on the Aegean side, in the Gulf of Xeros, rose almost immediately to a height of 300 feet. The isthmus was further flanked by marshes. From Bulair to Cape Helles, at the entrance to the Dardanelles, the distance was 52 miles.

Such,

in brief, was the Gallipoli Peninsula, a most unattractive scene for major military operations, especially as it offered very little room for extended movements by attacking forces. Nature seemed to have specially designed it to protect the most coveted of waterways, for the possession of which great armies and fleets had striven at intervals all through the history of the Western world.

The Turks called the Dardanelles 'BahrSefed Boghazi "-the Mouth of the White Sea. The Straits first figure in the story of mankind at the siege of Troy, but they must have been the scene of great conflicts in far earlier eras before written history began. Mr. Walter Leaf wrote in 1915:

Even Priam's Troy was not the first. Below the feet of Priam and Hector there lay yet older Troys, of which they knew nothing; many centuries must have passed since the days of the Second City," where Schliemann found the great treasure of gold and silver, jade and

amber, proving that even at that remote date the holding of the Straits was the source of wealth and power. And below the " Second City," again, lie the rude and humble walls of the first-how many centuries older still, who can say ? Of those ancient cities no other record has come down to us; but in their remains forty centuries look down on the present battlefields as surely as they did from the Pyramids on the armies of Napoleon.

The Trojan War was fought, not for the fair face of Helen, but for the right to control trade. King Priam of Troy sought to levy imposts on the Greek galleys passing up and down the Straits to the Black Sea. He insisted that the ships should unload their goods upon his shores and that the merchandise should be carried overland to the Sea of Marmora, where it was to be once more put upon shipboard. The Greeks fought him until his capital was razed to the ground. That was in 1200 B.C., as the remains of pottery found in the excavations at Troy sufficiently attested. After more than three thousand years the issue fought out at the Dardanelles remained in one primary essential precisely the same. Australians and British and French shed their blood at the Dardanelles that corn from the fruitful lands bordering on the Black Sea should have free and unrestricted access to the Mediterranean.

Throughout the long pageant of history the issue remained unaltered. Greece rose to greatness, and Athens flourished, because the Black Sea trade was in Greek hands; and when, with the fall of Sestos, the Greek seaport on the Gallipoli Peninsula near the Narrows, Greece lost control of the Straits, she lost her proud position also. The two most famous military passages of the Straits in early times were those of Xerxes in 480 B.C. from Asia to Europe, and of Alexander the Great in 334 B.C. from

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Europe to Asia. Both crossed upon bridges of boats, and Herodotus says that Xerxes and his Persians took seven days and seven nights, going continuously without any pause." From the earliest days the swimming of the Straits had been counted something of a feat, though indeed it is no very remarkable performance. What Leander did at Abydos, Lord Byron repeated, and it is recorded that certain officers of H.M.S. Shearwater, whose names are not preserved, performed the same exploit towards the end of last century.

When the Emperor Constantine decided to build his eastern capital on the Golden Horn the passage of the Straits was not vigorously guarded. The knights of the Fourth Crusade held Abydos in 1204, and some roving adven

Abydos and

turers seized Gallipoli in 1306, but exactly 50 years later the Turks crossed from Asia, and thenceforth the story of the Dardanelles becomes part of the story of the Ottoman Empire. Constantinople did not pass into the hands of the Turks for nearly a hundred years afterwards; but when Mohammed the Conqueror entered the capital and slew the last of the Byzantine emperors in 1453 he quickly realized that he must guard his western gates. One of his first acts after conquering Constantinople was to fortify the Dardanelles. Sestos were abandoned, and Mohammed chose the very narrowest portion of the Straits for his new structures. On the slope of a projecting hill on the European side he built Kilid Bahr, "the Key of the Sea," more generally known as the "Castle of Europe." On the Asiatic side he built Sultaniyeh Kalesi, "the Castle of Asia," beside which grew up the town sometimes called Dardanelles, known to the Turks as Chanak Kalesi, and figuring in the records of the war as Chanak. The castles of Mohammed were strongly made, and their tall keeps continued to dominate the Narrows through all the vicissitudes of Turkey's later history. The castellated towers of Chanak formed, with the aid of aeroplanes, a guide for the guns of the Queen Elizabeth when she bombarded the Narrows from the Gulf of Xeros. In recent decades Chanak became a pleasant marine resort, and it was the point at which all vessels traversing the Straits were compelled to stop and produce their papers. Passage was only permitted in daylight. Chanak and Kilid Bahr were the "Old Castles," and when they were built the outer entrance of the Dardanelles was undefended. By the middle of the seventeenth century ordnance had improved, and it was thought worth while to build fresh castles at the outer entrance. Kum Kale was therefore built on the Asiatic side and Sedd-el-Bahr on the Gallipoli side, on the western extremity of Morto Bay. They were called "the New Castles of Europe and Asia," and were separated by a channel about 4,000 yards wide.

A British fleet had twice traversed the Dardanelles during war, once by force, and once under menace. In 1807 Admiral Sir J. Duckworth was sent to Turkish waters with a squadron of line-of-battle ships and frigates, with the object of compelling the then Sultan to break his alliance with France. He passed the Narrows under fire, destroyed some Turkish ships near Gallipoli, and anchored before

Constantinople. The enterprise called chiefly for skilful seamanship, and to sail a whole squadron through the tortuous Straits and against the swift currents was a brilliant achievement even in the face of guns for which our seamen felt contempt. But having forced

H.M.S. "QUEEN ELIZABETH." Inset Captain G. P. W. Hope. Dardanelles, Duckworth found himself in precisely the position in which, in the opinion of many experts, the British Fleet would have found itself if in 1915 it had effected the perilous passage. He lay in sight of Constantinople but he could not take the city. For that task an army was needed, and he had no troops. Finding himself short of supplies, he returned through the Dardanelles with his mission unfulfilled. He ran past the shore defences with wind and tide, was again bombarded, and suffered considerable damage.

Yet the guns levelled against him chiefly fired stone cannon-balls! The inference was that the difficulties of seizing the Dardanelles had not lessened with the flight of centuries.

The next time British forces entered the Dardanelles was in 1854, at the time of the Crimean War. As Great Britain and France were in alliance with Turkey, there was no 'opposition. British and French forces landed at Gallipoli, and afterwards fortified the isthmus of Bulair. The object was to secure the lines of communication with the Crimea, and the episode does not call for extended explanation.

In 1878 Admiral Hornby and a British Fleet traversed the Dardanelles and anchored before Constantinople as a naval demonstration. The moment was critical. Russia was at war with Turkey, and her army had reached the Sea of Marmora. The Russian troops were within sight of the dome of Santa Sophia. A popular song of the day compendiously epitomized British policy. Its refrain ran: "The Russians shall not take Constantinople." It was thought that the appearance of a British Fleet would deter the somewhat exhausted Russians from entering the city, and the demonstration effected its purpose. The danger lay in the

possibility that the Russians might make terms with the Turks, and induce them to resist Admiral Hornby in the Dardanelles. He ran through the Straits in a blinding snowstorm, with his ships cleared for action. His flagship, H.M.S. Alexandra, grounded for four hours near Chanak. But the Turks did not fire, and the situation was saved. Admiral Hornby was always convinced that he could have got through in any case, for the Turkish defences were not then powerful. Yet he was not blind to the difficulties, as the following extract from a dispatch written six months earlier clearly shows:

If you will send for the chart of the Dardanelles, you will see that from three and a half miles below Kilid Bahar to Ak Bashi Imian, six and a half miles above it, an almost continuous cliff overhangs the shore line, while the Straits close to half a mile in one part [this should have been three-quarters] and are never more than two miles wide. An enemy in possession of the peninsula would be sure to put guns on commanding points of those cliffs, all the more if the present batteries, which are à fleur d'eau, were destroyed. Such guns could not fail to stop transports and colliers, and would be most difficult for men-of-war to silence. We should have to fire at them with considerable elevation. Shots which were a trifle low would lodge harmlessly in the sandstone cliffs; those a trifle high would fly into the country without the slightest effect on the gunners, except amusement

Many of the shells fired during the naval bombardments in 1915 met with the fate herein